Multimedia: Canadiens end season with win over Leafs

Randy Cunneyworth, in what was probably his last press conference as coach of the Montreal Canadiens, thanked his players for “professionalism and hard work.”
Singling out Josh Gorges and Erik Cole, Cunneyworth lauded “leadership that got us through some tough times.”

After the game, the Canadiens sent six players to the Hamilton Bulldogs: Blake Geoffrion, Louis Leblanc, Frédéric St. Denis , Robert Mayer , Gabriel Dumont and Aaron Palushaj

71 Comments

Love Bill’s report card. Agree mostly with the A’s and B’s. I hope this doesn’t this mean the C’s and D’s all have to go?? I think there is a place on the CH for guys like Moen, Blunden, Staubs, even White. just having guys like Staubits in the lineup makes everyone a little tougher and lord knows we need that.

I don’t know how anyone can defend JM here saying he was a superior coach. I couldn’t stand the brand if passive hockey we were playing under him, and the team clearly tuned him out. Gawd ppl!!! I for one am glad he’s gone. F””” the system

Josh Gorges – B+ – As a teacher, I see all kinds of students. There are the lazy, brilliant ones, like an Alex Kovalev, who don’t need to do much to nail everything. You wish they’d try harder, but at the end of the day, they still ace everything and still get A’s. Then there’s the boring middle group. And then … then you have the pluggers. These are the guys who don’t have a lot of natural ability, but who push and work with everything they’ve got and reach levels they have no business attaining. You love these students as much as the geniuses, no doubt about it, and this is where a guy like Josh Gorges comes from. If it were about natural ability, Josh Gorges would be a career minor-leaguer. His skating, handling, shooting, and hockey sense are all, well, let’s say “not elite”. Okay, they’re marginal. But inside, this guy is a champ. He’s Rocky Balboa. He’s learned how to figure what the play is likely to be, and more often than not he gets himself into the middle of it. He knows every safe play there is and consistently makes it, ensuring the love of his coaches. He’d throw himself in front of a cannon to break up a scoring chance. He’s just your average super-hero without super-powers, basically: Batman without the gadgets. That’s why everybody loves him so much, and why a lot of people think he should be the next captain. He doesn’t have the goods to be an elite player in the NHL, but he’s pretty damn good, and when you consider that he’s done it all on pretty-much sheer will … it’s awfully impressive.

Peter Budaj – B+ – Possibly deserves a higher grade, since his stats aren’t far behind Price’s, however he played against inferior competition, and so sporadically that he is difficult to evaluate. That said, he did a fine job in limited action, and there is no reason not to want him back again next year.

Lars Eller – B+ – Like Subban, Eller played his second season with an expanded role and acquitted himself very well. With 16 goals and 28 points, Eller put up good numbers as compared to other 3rd-line centres. The question is, just how many of those other 3rd-line centres were only 22 and might as well have had had Moe and Curly for linemates? Eller took some bashing for “inconsistency” and lack of production this year: probably the most misplaced criticism any Hab had to take, and that is saying something! This is not a player who had consistent linemates or assignments. He didn’t get great minutes, nor much PP time. Eller’s 28 points as a sophomore match Jordan Staal’s second-year totals, and I see them as similar players. Eller has a bright future and I see him as the potential anchor of an excellent third line down the road … some people think that “3rd-line” is synonymous with “unimportant”, but that could not be further from the truth.

Tomas Plekanec – B – There are a lot of reasons that Pleks did not achieve as much as he could have this year: he had a constantly changing rotation of underwhelming wingers, he was run ragged playing the most minutes of any forward on the team, he was used on both the PP and the PK, and he was invariably assigned to check the other teams’ best players, to name a few. In spite of that, he managed to score more goals than Desharnais and break the 50-point mark for the third year in a row. That said, Pleks has the ability to be a 70-point player, and no matter how tough things get, he needs to be a consistent offensive threat. Since signing his big contract, he’s been a very effective player, but has only averaged 55 points. Not good enough. Not for him. This is a guy who does everything he’s asked, but he needs to dig a little deeper and demand more from himself: it would be awesome if the Habs could throw him a bone and find him a decent set of wingers to make returning to the 70-point plateau a little easier. Then again, they could have done that this year (no doubt he could’ve hit 70 points with DD’s assignment) but they needed him to carry the fire as the second-line, all-situations guy. I don’t have a problem with that, but I believe Pleks is a top-20 player, and I want to see him prove it.

Carey Price fans are a combination of Leafs fans (the more he loses the more they love him) and Bruins fans (we hate Halak – for *winning*). Bizarre bizarre behaviour. They externalize their angst by attacking Halak LOL!

Erik Cole – A+ – He was The Man all season long for the Habs, consistently lighting the lamp after a slow start that must partially be blamed on Jacques Martin’s “research” that kept Cole off the PP. A big reason for Cole’s career-high goal total was precisely the fact that he was used on the PP, which for some reason has not always been the case. With this in mind, 30 goals again next year is a definite possibility. Tremendous leadership, effort, hustle, and skill: he was a bright spot in a dismal season.

Max Pacioretty – A+ – A huge year for Pacioretty, whose break-out season last year was interrupted by Chara’s infamous attempted decapitation. For those of us who, after the hit, were simply praying that Max was alive, this kind of bounce-back season was impossible to foresee. With 33 goals and a surprising 32 assists, Max led the Habs in scoring with 65 points. He dished out hits and also led the team in shots: actually, he finished 10th in the NHL in shots. Factor in that he finished 4th in the NHL in even-strength goals – ahead of a LOT of pretty impressive names – and you can see that Pacioretty is the real deal, a legitimate NHL star just approaching his prime years.

David Desharnais – A – Can a team that finished last in the NHL really have this good a first line? Yes. This speaks to their injuries and lack of depth. But Desharnais had a fantastic season and deserves props. You could preface this by saying that he should get credit for overcoming so much on his way to the NHL, but at this point, he has outgrown that. It no longer matters how he was underestimated before, because he proved this year that he’s a legitimate top-six NHL player, and he should be evaluated solely on that, and not his story. It’s a compliment, to him, as far as I’m concerned. So his grade – a notch below his wingers – is not a slight. He’s shown he’s a visionary playmaker with incredible hockey IQ and top-flight skills. At the same time, he over-achieved with a 16% shooting-percentage (unlikely to be replicated) and was carried to a degree by a pair of awesome power-forwards. Plekanec took the tougher assignments, and the lesser wingers, and played more and harder minutes. Even so, DD excelled in every task he was given, never gave less than everything possible, and – best of all – gave the fans a new local hero. He’s the obvious number-one centre next year, and he’s earned it: the hard way.

PK Subban – A- – A lot of people have used the term “sophomore jinx” in discussing PK’s second season. This suggests that a lot of people look more closely at the stats columns than the games. I guess some fans were expecting him to expand on his points totals from last year, instead of scoring 2 fewer points to follow up his rookie campaign. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. This year, PK’s role was hugely expanded: he was on the top pairing all year, leading the team in minutes played by a wide margin. He went up against the best opposition players at even-strength, was on the first PP unit, and logged heavy penalty kill minutes. Defensively, the Subban of this year was not recognizable as the Subban of last year, as he became a superior (on his way to being dominant) defensive player. Going from being -8 on a playoff team to being +7 on a last-place squad is indicative of his turnaround, but even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Simply put, he was a force in his own end, and he did it without sacrificing his agitating, competitive style, while somehow toning down the rookie behaviour that sometimes got him in hot water in the past. Offensively, there wasn’t much of a slide: he actually piled up 5 more assists than last year. He slipped from 14 goals as a rookie to just 7 this year, and this directly reflects his shooting percentage, which dropped by 50%. I attribute some of this to his new role as the primary shooter on the PP: without the Wiz around to distract the opposition, goalies were able to key on PK and his fairly predictable (and frequently wild) one-timers. To reach the next level, Subban needs to work on his shot accuracy, but overall, his second season was much superior to his first, and I would say he must be mentioned in any serious conversation about the best defencemen (not just young defencemen) in the league.

Carey Price – A- – I don’t think this grade reflects Price’s ability. Sometimes, though, you find yourself in a position where it is hard to excel, and this is what happened to Price this year. He’s like a star student surrounded by dumbasses in a class being taught by a substitute teacher: there’s only so much you can do. Price’s stats are well above what you would expect the goalie of a last-place team to have, and that he was able to remain statistically respectable this year with the heinous D-corps he had is a testament to his natural ability. At the same time, it did seem that sometimes his heart wasn’t in it. It was like he knew how bad his team was, and how hard it was going to be for them to compete, and it made him lose hope every now and then. Now, Price has never had what you would call a “good team” in front of him in the NHL, which doesn’t satisfy his critics, Halak worshippers all. True, Halak was able to carry a mediocre squad on an exciting run, but the Druce Juice only lasts so long, and so it was for Halak, who was brutal against the Flyers in his heroic post-season. At some point, you have to give up on asking for miraculous goaltending, and ice a good squad: this is how you give a goalie a chance. Someday, the Habs – who will certainly lock down The Natural long term – will do this for Price, and then the unwashed masses will see what the hockey professionals (who uniformly recognize him as an elite goalie) have always seen. And right about then, the Habs will seriously contend for the Cup. Until then, HIO will remain a bastion of goalie debate, and a fountain of onanistic pleasure for Halakatamites everywhere.

Nice assessments. I think I would have had Josh Gorges in here though as an A grade player. But yeah, as an underrated player, it’s no surprise that his skills aren’t as tangible/obvious and hard to rate.

I mean, just in this last game, he was good at poking pucks away that could have resulted in a goal for Toronto or resulted in a dangerous chance.

Oh yes on Easter Sunday it’s important to trot out the myriad of lame excuses of a Kool-aid drinking Price fan: He walks on the water, none of it is His fault, He’s never done wrong, never let the team down with lethargic play, bad goals, soft goals immediately after the CH score a hard-fought goal, the free passes continue for He is Golden Boy and it’s always somebody else’s fault. The goalie of the future has yet to deliver, has gone one round in His career and just put to bed a three year playoff losing streak at home. The Price Kool Aid drinkers walk lockstep towards groupthink and monkey see, monkey do-land.

I dare you Scarey Price, go one round.

How dare Halak go two rounds making 40-50 saves a game to bail out his porous defence. Canadiens win again! I hate you Halak. Your fans are “Onanists” because you have shown up The Anointed One. We don’t want to win. We want Scarey Price to fail again so we can thank Halak for his remarkable feats by throwing mud pies at him like someone having a Terrible Two tantrum. Impressive.

With the season now mercifully over, let’s focus on who will be the new GM followed by new coach and then assistants.

Tuesday is the start of a new chapter in the Habs future with the Lottery pick, let’s hope it’s either a first, second, or third. Don’t want the team to move down after all the crap we had to go through to get to this point.

Next year will be a better year with this team back in the playoffs where it belongs. We are not in a rebuild but rather a retool because we have pieces in place, we just have to fill in the blanks.

I hear how we don’t have nothing coming up from the minors. I don’t know what the hell these people are looking at, especially CBC raving about how much talent the Leafs have in their minor league system.

I guess they forget to see that come next season the Hamilton Bulldogs will be a completely different team. They will be a powerhouse in the AHL.

Players like Tinordi , Beaulieu, Gallagher, Pateryn, Kristo, Bournival, plus this years top three pick.

With players who we saw with the Habs this year. But will likely end up in the AHL will be I think anyways Diaz, Geoffrion, St. Denis, Palushaj, Leblanc, plus anybody that they may draft in this years draft or acquire in past or future trades like Patrick Holland.

I guess if these players don’t count as anybody the Habs have coming up from the minors, then no we don’t have much in the minors.

The new GM will settle in and look over what this team is lacking and looks at it strengths and weakness and will move out from there. There is some players here that put in the right situation with defined roles can still be better players then they were this year.

Sometimes when a team has a bad year like the Habs have had many players look bad. After saying that this will be a tough job for the new GM to sort out, hopefully with the help of Larry Carriere the right decisions can be made.

Next season, I am predicting a 100 point season and we will be in the top four in the conference.

I agree with you Hamilton will be much improved with the likes of all you mentioned except whoever we draft from junior this year can only play in the NHL or must be returned to Junior, can not play in AHL

The last 2 months of cheering against the Habs has shown me the light that the current draft lottery system is fatally flawed, why not give the team that just missed out on the playoffs the best chance at 1st overall? Teams would have no motivation to tank, or otherwise, give every non playoff team an equal chance at the 1st overall pick, now THAT would be must see TV!

Posted that 3 weeks ago. Give #17 the 1st pick, #18 the 2nd. Keeps everyone playing hard no tanking or hoping for losses and for what it costs to go to an NHL game you should expect full out play every night.

Hey, I know RC did real well, considering…but I wonder if someone would approach him and ask if he would stay with us as an assistant. I mean, he hasn’t been a coach for that long. I know he could get a head coaching positions elsewhere, possibly. I think that would be good.

The potential flaw in your argument is that there is little evidence that Martin’s record early this year is indicative of the way in which the rest of the season would have played out. While in simple terms of wins and losses the two coaches may have had similar records, if we look at the statistics which underlie those games, a different story emerges.

Under Cunnyworth, as a simple matter of statistics, our powerplay generated less shots and scoring chances than under Martin. As with the number of points with which the team projected to finish the season, they may have had a relatively similar power play percentage (which is not necessarily indicative of the true “strength” of a powerplay when factoring in strange slumps in “luck”), but with Martin, the team was much more successful at generating chances, indicating that it would likely have gotten better (their “luck” would have evened out) had Martin remained coach.

Both goals for and goals against per game during the two coaching periods also favour Martin, again lending credence to the argument that, while the brute results were the same, Martin was a superior coach. He lost, but was more competitive with essentially the same team, and indications were that, given the team’s superior level of play, his “luck” would turn, and that they would win more under him than under Cunnyworth. Given a large enough sample size, essentially removing “luck,” you would end up with a more successful team under Martin.

This argument, of course, becomes more complicated when you factor in injuries and trades, but even at the start of Cunnyworth’s tenure, before the Kostitsyn and Cammalleri deals, the goals for and against figures are in Martin’s favour.

Now, all this does ignore one of my largest complaints regarding Martin. I despised some of his lineup choices, such as the much maligned decision to place Darche on the powerplay ahead of Cole. However, I feel that both coaches stand on equal footing in this regard. Cunnyworth’s overuse of the useless Blunden (forgive me Blunden lovers) was maddening while Palushaj sat on the fourth line next to Staubitz. Cunnyworth’s fascination with “blue-collar” hockey players in general was painful.

I’ll certainly agree that he played heavy favourites with certain individuals who conformed to his rigid system while breaking others who did not or could not do so. There are reasons to be glad that he’s gone, and his inflexibility, especially with respect to younger players, is among them.

To be fair though…Martin had Cammy, Gionta, and A. Kostitsyn to help his stats. 3 of our top 6…These players all left to be replaced with AHL players (yes, I am including Bourque in that category). Cunny had a much poorer lineup than Martin.
I know you touched on this, but I don’t think you give it enough import.
__________________________
☞ Wow, that’s a nice lookin’ pair of Crocs!” Said no one ever.☜

72, I always enjoy your posts and mostly agree with you. Could I offer a very different take from yours on RC? The fact that he inherited a train-wreck in progress renders any assessment based on record as meaningless.

I would therefore hold an agnostic view of RC’s worth as a coach: we simply cannot know it.

Footnote: JM was not without attainments, but he seemed to base his system on a philosophy which I consider anathema to sport: playing not to lose. If you don’t play to win, you will never reach the ultimate prize. JM’s career is a perfect case in point.

I really hope the Canadiens don’t botch their draft pick. It’s essential to our rebuild that we pick the right guy who’ll be brought up correctly and develop into that “franchise” player.

The organizational need is 100% down the middle. I’m sure the team will take hard looks at centermen Mikhail Grigorenko, Alex Galchenyuk and Radek Faksa. We can finally add that big #1 center to our depth chart…

Here’s hoping to a more joyful season next year, because this year was terribly painful to follow. I can’t believe Oilers fans went through this for years…

We have 3 pretty good centers if our goal is to continue being a mediocre team. We have a chance to grab a big impact center that we have been lacking for about 15-20 years. The management better not blow it.

3 good centers? Are any of them elite?? Lars Eller is the only one you can say that has some size, otherwise we’re small down the middle.

Picking between Grigorenko, Galchenyuk, and Faksa gives us a chance to add a blue chip prospect to our farm system and build for the future. How far can we really go with Desharnais and Plekanec? (no offense to them…) It’s always essential to continue building that depth in the pipeline so the team constantly remains competitive.

If anyone truly tries to rationalize how good we are and how we’re on our way, then you’re looking at things with your Red White and Blue glasses. This team has 3 pieces moving forward: Price (goalie), Subban (puck-moving defenseman) and Pacioretty (power forward). We need a TON more pieces to one day be a competitor.

I really hope they choose a forward. As for Centre or Winger, go for the best one. Yeah, sure it would be great to have a dominant centre, but if the scouting department believes a certain winger will be better, well, choose the better one.

But yeah. So many high ranked D-men this year. Guess it wasn’t the ideal year to tank. Anyways, Habs have a chance to draft an impact player for the future. I hope they take advantage of it.

I hope we pick Galchenyuk russian born in the USA playing style reminds me of Malkin.

And with our second pick
Update to my earlier post below concerning my hopes of Canadiens drafting local boy Mike Matheson with our 1st pick of the second round. Talking to some scouts looks like he is high on some late first round scouts wish list. Bruins interest is moderate but they love to raid Quebec talent on habs. Pittsburgh is high and also has connection because Matheson’s family has some ties to that organization through one of his Uncle’s. But from all what i hear,,` though if he is still around when St. Louis picks he will be chosen by the Blues. So looks like the habs would have to move up to select this local gem from Pointe Claire
I would like to see Habs use second pick on Mike Matheson local pointe clare boy, rated 25th by ISS 29 byCSS and 37 by TSN, hopefully will still be available with our first pick in the second round, One of the best pure skating d man available in the draft, playing in USHL for former hab Jim Montgomery in Dubuque . Played Midget for Lac st Louis ions, ala Louis Leblanc. Captained Midget lions to Midget provincial Championship last year, played for Canada’s gold medal team at Under 18 Ivan Hlinka, Looks to be headed to NCAA which is fine as we have some d prospects ahead of him . Matheson has size great shot and skates as smooth and strong as anyone in draft. He was projected number 1 in last year’s QMJHL draft ahead of Nathan Mckinnon at the time, but chose the USHL and NCAA route even so still went in the second round of the Q draft would be a steal if we could get him with our first pick in the second round, and a local pick to boot bilingual for all the politically thinking fans. He is a steal in the 2nd round.

I think Edmonton will take Murray or Dumba, I think you are right the habs will probably take Grigorenko but if we can confirm Galchenyuk’s health i hope we take Alex, Sarnia Sting picked him first in the OHL draft ahead of Yakupov last year although they took Yakupov with the second pick overall as well . Did you watch the Hightlight link i posted of Galchenyuk and Matheson